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Romans 15:1-13
15:1 We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves. 2 Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up. 3 For Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, “The reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me.” 4 For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. 5 May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, 6 that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. 7 Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.
8 For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God’s truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, 9 and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written,
“Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles,
and sing to your name.”
10 And again it is said,
“Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people.”
11 And again,
“Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles,
and let all the peoples extol him.”
12 And again Isaiah says,
“The root of Jesse will come,
even he who arises to rule the Gentiles;
in him will the Gentiles hope.”
13 May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.
(ESV)
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
If you have a Bible, I invite you to turn to Romans, chapter 15. Romans 15. Believe it or not, we only have, after this Sunday, 2 more weeks in the book of Romans. We have been here for, I I can't honestly remember, for a while. We could have been here for 10 years.
Joel Brooks:We were just trying to keep enough pace that where you actually remembered it was a letter. Hopefully, we we allowed you to zoom in at some of the right places and to zoom out, as we went through this remarkable letter. But we have 2 more weeks and then we will begin our summer series which is going to be through the book of Proverbs, something we've never taught through at Redeemer. We're gonna take 9 weeks to look at Proverbs. And, I'll tell you a little bit more about that in the weeks ahead.
Joel Brooks:So Romans 15, we'll begin reading in verse 1. We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak and to not please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up. For Christ did not please himself. But as it is written, the reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me.
Joel Brooks:For whatever was written in our former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope. May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice, glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you for the glory of God. For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised. To show God's truthfulness in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs.
Joel Brooks:In order that the gentiles might glorify God for His mercy. As it is written, therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles and sing to your name. And again it is said, Rejoice, O Gentiles, with His people. And again, praise the Lord all you Gentiles and let all the peoples extol him. And again, Isaiah says, the root of Jesse will come, even he who arises to rule the Gentiles.
Joel Brooks:In Him will the Gentiles hope. May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace and believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit, you may abound in hope. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. If you would pray with me.
Joel Brooks:Father, we thank you for your word. We recognize, as we just read, that it was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. And so I pray that we would be filled with a glorious hope this morning as we listen to what you have to say to us. Father, pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. But Lord, may your words remain and may they change us.
Joel Brooks:We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. So last year, when we were in the thick of Romans, I think we were in maybe Romans chapter 5, I talked about how Christianity was the most, culturally and ethnically diverse movement in human history, and how it's not even close. And I'd like to share a few of those statistics again with you that I shared last year. None of you remember them anyway.
Joel Brooks:I hardly remember at times things that you know I've said the day before. I've done entire sermons, rewritten sermons on text only to later find I already had written that sermon years earlier. So if I can't remember my own sermons, I realize that, you know, what we said a year ago might be a little fuzzy. But for those of you who do remember, I'm still gonna stir you up by way of reminder. The New Testament has been translated to over 1500 different languages.
Joel Brooks:The Gospels have been translated to an additional 1200 languages. Which means that 27 100 different cultures are reading the words and the stories of Jesus, in their own language. No other religion even comes close. Islam is the closest of all of them, in which the Quran has been translated just over 100 times. Today, there are now 2 and a half 1000000000 people who profess to be followers of Jesus.
Joel Brooks:Most of these Christians don't look anything like me. Jesus has this way of just capturing the hearts of people of every culture, every ethnicity. Pulling people from all over the world to them to himself. Yes. Europe and Asia still have the largest Christian population, but there are 541,000,000 Christians in Africa.
Joel Brooks:Making Africa the first continent with over half of its population being practicing Christians. 1 out of every 4 Christians in the world is African. And this number is growing. China now has over 100,000,000 Christians, and is adding 10,000 new believers every day. And what that means is within 7 years, just 7 years, China will have more Christians than America.
Joel Brooks:Christianity has actually been growing at twice the rate of the population growth among all Asian countries. Even in the some of the hardest places in the world for the gospel to go forth, places like India, They are celebrating 15,000 baptisms a month. I say this because if I want you to be reminded as to what a average Christian looks like, or maybe a median Christian looks like. This person, if you look at world Christianity, this person would most likely be a woman, living in either a village in Nigeria, or a shanty town in Brazil, it would be inconceivably poor by our standards. The average Christian does not look like me.
Joel Brooks:So why am I telling you all of this information again? First off, I just really want to. I have the pulpit, and I'm allowed to. 2nd, I love reminding you that what we see here in America is just a tiny slice. A slice of of how Christianity is being expressed all over the world.
Joel Brooks:I remember seeing this really for the, I don't want to say for the first time, but very vividly when I was in Indonesia about a decade ago. I was going there to to teach at, to kinda have some underground seminaries there and, but while I was there I'm talking to a number of missionaries and they were just having the hardest time reaching, people with the gospel. Evangelism just kept falling flat. And it's because they were presenting American Christianity. And they were treating them like they were Americans.
Joel Brooks:And they kept going to people saying, would you like to make a personal decision for Jesus Christ? And they kept saying that. Would you make a personal decision? We make a personal decision. The only problem was nobody in their culture ever made any personal decisions.
Joel Brooks:It was always a group, a community decision. And they had this breakthrough one time when finally an imam that they were reaching out to, he gathered his entire street together. And then he came back and he said, we have all accepted Jesus as our Lord and savior. And the missionaries, like, yeah. I mean, they're telling me this.
Joel Brooks:I'm like, are are they allowed to do that? Like, are they? I mean, it doesn't have to be each individual person. They're like, as a community, we have accepted Jesus as our Lord and savior. It's hard for us to even fathom that kind of mindset here in America.
Joel Brooks:But you have all of these different expressions of the gospel, expressions of Christianity happening all over this world. Remember that Jesus is gathering to Himself people from every tongue, tribe, and nation to sing His praises. The final reason I want to tell you about all of this, remind you, is because this is what Romans 15 is about. The whole discussion that Paul is having here assumes that the church is made up of vastly different backgrounds. These Christians in Rome, they came from, different backgrounds, different socio economic groups.
Joel Brooks:They had different political persuasions. Different levels of education, different ethnicities. Some were slaves, some were free. Some were Jews and thus religious insiders. Some were Gentiles, thus religious outsiders.
Joel Brooks:But collectively, they all came together as the church. The church in Rome might have been small, but early on, it was quite diverse. And, of course, with this diversity came friction. That's what chapters 14 and 15 are about. It's dealing with this friction.
Joel Brooks:And Paul is saying, yes there's some friction there, but you know what? There's also incredible opportunity here with this diversity. Because if we live in harmony, Christ will receive glory. I love the word harmony here. It says if they lived in harmony with with one another in accord with Christ Jesus, God would be glorified.
Joel Brooks:Harmony. That's different than uniformity. Harmony is different from conformity. You know, when we sing the doxology, together as a church, we're gonna do that to close our service today. I've noticed that a number of you sing in harmony when we do it.
Joel Brooks:I get to hear it's so beautiful. I want to, you know, I want to do the like the, ah man. Yeah, I want to do all that, But like, I I don't wanna throw you all off either and so I'm like, I'm I'm in this boring person up here singing. But, next time you know we're gonna sing the doxology, which is always the last Sunday of every month together, just be sure to like sit next to a Lauren Starnes or one of our other worship leaders who might not be up there, but but actually out in the congregation and just listen. Sing too.
Joel Brooks:But but listen. It's gorgeous harmony. To achieve harmony, we don't all sing the same note. We're all singing different notes, but all to the same song. That's harmony.
Joel Brooks:That's what Paul is saying our goal is here. Is he doesn't say I need everybody to sing the same note. He's saying, no, everybody's sing different notes. The notes that come from your backgrounds, your culture, your personality. Sing those notes all to the tune of Jesus.
Joel Brooks:We come together in this beautiful harmony. I got to experience this, a few years ago with my home group. I was struck with just how diverse the home group I was in. How diverse we were. We had people from every, every political spectrum, both ends, even like 3, 4 ends.
Joel Brooks:We were out there politically. We're at different ends of the socioeconomic spectrum. We had some people who loved U2. Others loved Nickelback. Which apparently is making a resurgence.
Joel Brooks:We all, came from different stages of life. And the group that I was in, we we had someone who was a was a widow. Somebody We had a couple who were empty nesters. We had Lauren and I, I like to say, in our prime, full of, like, wisdom yet still vitality. We we had those who were, had younger kids than us.
Joel Brooks:We had some newlyweds. We had a number of singles. And we're all in this group together. I mean, we're all over the spectrum in every way. And, our first time together was the only word I could use to describe it was painful.
Joel Brooks:I mean it was just so so awkward, and I have a coffee mug that actually says awkward is my specialty. And it was still awkward for me. The second week it only got marginally less awkward. But then we began telling our stories. Not the stories about what political party we belong to, or what work was like, or or what kind of jobs we have.
Joel Brooks:We actually began telling the story that matters, the story about Jesus. And how Jesus has come and how he has saved us. And what happened is all those different notes began harmonizing together in the one song of Christ. And it became beautiful. That's Paul's picture for us.
Joel Brooks:Once again, I mentioned this last week, but when Jesus formed together the 12, the disciples, He got the polar ends of the political spectrum. He gets Matthew the tax collector who works for Rome. He gets Simon the zealot who wants to kill those who work for Rome. And he says, I'm putting you in the same home group together. Haven't you all experienced that in some of your home groups?
Joel Brooks:And now he says harmonize. Harmonize. You can actually see God's plan for harmony. His plan for harmony with all of humanity. You can find that in the very first page of your Bible.
Joel Brooks:Or second page, depending on your font. But Genesis chapter 2. In Genesis chapter 2, when God creates humans, he starts by first only creating 1 human, Adam. And then he kind of divides Adam in half. I know that your translations, you know that it says he took a rib from Adam, but just know nowhere else in Scripture is that word translated rib.
Joel Brooks:It's translated as a side. The picture is either a large piece of side or possibly a division in half. It's one of those, but a significant side was taken out of Adam, And then he makes the woman. So picture this. God takes 1, divides them into 2, and then what's the first thing God tells them?
Joel Brooks:Be 1. You ever notice that? It's the it's one of the, like, the theme of the bible in a nutshell there. He takes 1, He divides them into 2, and then He says, be 1. Love one another in such a way that you actually become 1.
Joel Brooks:Why did He do it that way? Why why didn't He just create 2 people at the start? Wouldn't that make more sense? It's because He's teaching us something. From one, there will become many who are to come back together as 1 in love for one another and love for me.
Joel Brooks:The very start of the Bible, you see God's desire for harmony for humanity. This is the song that God wants to be sung among His people for all of eternity. Not a bunch of individual notes, but people coming together in a glorious song from every tongue, tribe, and nation. From 1, we get 2. Then we love one another in such a way we become 1.
Joel Brooks:And of course this multiplies, now it's from 1. We get 2 and a half 1000000000. 2a half 1000000000 are now to come together in love to where we are 1. This has been God's plan from the very beginning. Paul's gonna go on from here to cite several Old Testament passages to show us that this is God's purpose for the entire world.
Joel Brooks:Remember he keeps saying and again and again and again. He's like pounding that scripture in us and he quotes from an entire spectrum of scripture. He he he quotes from the law and then he goes to the prophets and then he goes to the Psalms. He wants you to know that like all of your old testament speaks to this. God pulling people from every tongue, tribe, and nation to His praise.
Joel Brooks:And, of course, this was Jesus's heart. The prayer, Jesus's last prayer before He was crucified was, Father, make them 1. Make them 1. And the reason this is so important to Jesus is because our unity reflects God. God who exists as 3 persons, yet one God.
Joel Brooks:3 persons, but so loving, giving to one another. 1 God, 3 persons. This is what God created humanity to be. To be in his image or in his reflection. We reflect who God is when we come together as 1.
Joel Brooks:Now, I wanna be crystal clear here. We do not seek unity for unity's sake. We seek unity in order to show who God is. And that God is glorious. To seek unity for just unity's sake is a is a tower of Babel type of unity.
Joel Brooks:Unity isn't in and of itself good. The world seeks unity and and many forms and usually it's just a form of idolatry. If unity is just your goal, unity at all costs, then you are going to miss gospel unity. Which is what Paul is describing here. And I have seen so many well intentioned Christians, so many well intentioned churches, that have veered off their gospel calling, because they have made the mistake of thinking unity was their target.
Joel Brooks:But unity is not our target. Unity is a gift from Jesus that he gives to those who follow him. You actually see this here in verse 5. Paul prays, may the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another. Harmony or unity is something God must give or something that he must grant.
Joel Brooks:And he does this when we follow him. That's really what this text is is all about here. Paul is gonna tell us how we can live out the gospel, how we can walk in obedience to Christ. And when we do so, God will grant us harmony. Just as Jesus came in weakness, came to us who were weak, and He united himself to us, Jesus says, now reflect that gospel.
Joel Brooks:You go to others in their weakness and you unite yourself to them. This is our gospel calling. We see this. Look at verse 1 and 2. We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves.
Joel Brooks:But each of us please his neighbor for his good to build him up. Jeff did a great job, last week despite him throwing me under the bus for giving him an entire chapter. Told me he didn't have to. He did a great job last week of explaining the condition, the situation between the Jews and the Gentiles, there in Rome. If you remember, the Jewish people they were forced to leave the city of Rome for a number of years.
Joel Brooks:And they had just been given permission to return, but as these Jewish Christians are returning they're having a hard time fitting in with the gentile Christians because they have different eating habits, you know different dietary traditions they're trying to keep. Basically, those Jewish Christians, they believed in the gospel, but they hadn't actually thought about all of the implications as how it changed all of their life. They still thought that they needed to eat certain things, keep certain dietary laws in order for God to be pleased with them. Paul calls them weak for believing that. For the first time here in verse 1, Paul uses the word strong.
Joel Brooks:He doesn't use the word strong. He doesn't talk about the strong in chapter 14. For the first time he uses the word strong and he identifies with the strong. We who are strong. He's strong.
Joel Brooks:Strong is a person who understands the gospel and has thought about the implications of it for their life, and realizes, I am not saved by what I do, or by what I eat, but by grace alone. However, strong and weak also have, they have more than just a theological meaning here. There's a mixture of theological and social elements at work here. Strong elsewhere in scripture means the powerful. It's used to describe influential members in society.
Joel Brooks:Weak is used to describe the powerless, the poor, people of no importance. And that was certainly true of the Jewish Christians in Rome. I mean these Jewish Christians were so powerless, had so political capital that basically the emperor emperor could just throw them out of Rome. Force them to leave the city. And no one cared.
Joel Brooks:They were the definition of a nobody. Nobody went to city hall to picket it. Nobody's writing letters, you know, to the governing authorities, pleading their cases. It's just these Jewish Christians just gone. That's as powerless as you could get to be removed from your homes like that.
Joel Brooks:And now that they have come back, they're still powerless. They still have no political capital. They have no representation. They're the definition of weak. And then combined with that, they're also theologically weak.
Joel Brooks:So they're they're coming back socially weak, economically weak, politically weak, theologically weak. And so Paul doesn't even address them. He says, now strong. You strong, listen to me. You've got an obligation to take care of these people.
Joel Brooks:An obligation to bear with the failings of the weak and not to just please themselves. The word to bear with means more than just to tolerate. To bear with means to bear their burdens. In other words, the strength you have, God did not give you for status. The strength you have, God gave you for service.
Joel Brooks:He's equipped you to go and to bear the burdens of your weaker brother and sister. At verse 1 here, is just a sweeping statement. We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak and to not please ourselves. This is a sweeping statement and its implications, because there is not a area in our lives that this does not speak into. It affects your finances.
Joel Brooks:I wanna look more at this next week. Still come back people. We know if you skip out next week, it wasn't to go to the lake, so you don't want to hear that. If you are strong financially, you have an obligation to use your finances to not please yourself, but to help your struggling brother or sister carry their financial burden. Verse 1 affects your relationships.
Joel Brooks:If you are strong, you're to not only hang out with other strong people. If you have influence, build friendships with those who lack influence. If you're highly educated, build relationships with those who are not. If you are married and you have a family, and you know of a brother or sister who longs for those things as well, but doesn't have it, invite those people over for dinner. And not just to babysit.
Joel Brooks:Can I get an amen? And can I just say that several of you, I am seeing beautifully demonstrate this in your relationships? Some of you are using your strength so well to bear the burdens of, aging parents. You are modeling something for the majority of this congregation that we will someday have to do. And the time and the commitment you have to take them to doctor's appointments, some of them you're you've moved your parents into your home.
Joel Brooks:Thank you. You've been a beautiful example of that to me. I won't name this person to to, embarrass him, but I mean one of the crazy, most beautiful examples I've seen of this is is, someone here, their their father, who's recently passed, but he was, he he was in a home to be taken care of. And, he was getting angrier and angrier in there because they would turn up the TV at the highest level on Fox News all day. And so that's all you got all day.
Joel Brooks:Like, really loud. And, and so this man's son, he went and he bought a TV, took it someplace, and he said I want you to reprogram this remote and this TV to where any button that is pressed, literally any button, it just plays Ken Burns documentary on baseball. And then it presses again it stops it. But then if any any button once again is pressed again, it just picks up where it left off. Because this is like a 20 something hour documentary.
Joel Brooks:And it had that done and then had this TV put into his dad's room and just labeled it baseball TV. And so his dad just hits it and there it is. And he knows every player, knows every play. Strong. Beautifully taking care of the weak.
Joel Brooks:It's the gospel. Thank you to those of you who have modeled that for me. Verse 1, it doesn't just affect your finances or your relationships, it affects your choice of residence. Instead of asking where could I live to be most comfortable? You should be asking gated community?
Joel Brooks:Or does he want me to live in the Does he want me to live in a gated community or does he want me to live in the ghetto? And I realize that there are a whole lot of considerations in deciding where you need to live. I mean there's family size dynamics. There's there's safety considerations, there's proximity to work considerations. I realize there's a whole lot to that and I get it.
Joel Brooks:And parents, I also know that you have been tasked with taking care of your children, which are the weak. You have to take care of your children. You have to take that into consideration. I get it. But what Paul is asking us to do, those who are strong And by strong here, I would define it as this.
Joel Brooks:You have the ability and means to live where you want. You have that kind of freedom. Those kind of resources. If you are strong, would you ask God where you are supposed to live and say, I don't want to live in a place where I just please myself. I want to live in a place where I could be useful to others.
Joel Brooks:Sincerely, wholeheartedly ask Him. And wherever He sends you, it could be the wealthiest neighborhood or the poorest, wherever it is, that you would seek the weak and help bear their burdens. Lauren and I, we bought a house in Crestwood over 20 years ago for next to nothing. Everyone comes up to us all the time. We're like man, what an investment.
Joel Brooks:Gosh, you guys got it in the right time. What an investment. And we like to hear, you know, thank you. But just so you know, our investment is our neighbor's, and we have gotten such a return on that investment. And I'm not saying that you'll have to move, you know, there wherever.
Joel Brooks:It's just I will say this. Wherever you move, your neighbors are your investment. Alright. So verse 1 affects your finances, your relationships, your choice of residence. It also affects how you leverage your honor.
Joel Brooks:Remember Paul lived in a honor shame culture. Honor was more influential than money. So when Paul, when Paul earlier said that we are to outdo one another in showing honor, he's saying outdo one another and spending, like, the most important capital you can. He's talking about the greatest currency of his day. So do you have a reputation or do you have a name that can open doors?
Joel Brooks:If so, would you use that to open the doors for someone who can never get into those places? Jesus, remember, used His honor and He used His influence to open up a door for you. He used it in order to open a door that you might have access to his father. Really the gospel is our motivation for every one of these things. Look at verse 7.
Joel Brooks:It says, therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you for the glory of God. So let me just ask you, how did Jesus welcome you? Did he wait? Wait for you to, you know, finally pull yourself up by your bootstraps? Did he wait for you to finally clean up your life?
Joel Brooks:Wait for you to finally make it through a Bible long, you know, or a year long reading plan for your Bible? Maybe read Calvin's Institutes as well? And only then welcome you? Did he wait for you to become strong before he welcomed you? No.
Joel Brooks:For 1, him welcoming you was going to you in your weakness. Not waiting for you to come to Him. Romans 5:6. For while we were still weak at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. Christ didn't wait for us to become strong.
Joel Brooks:He came to us in our weakness. By His sheer grace, He saved us. I mean, we saw See that all through scripture. You know, who is Jesus always welcoming? Who is it is He always going to?
Joel Brooks:The prostitutes. The drunkards. The tax collectors. Jesus was always accused of going to the weak. Thank God, Jesus goes to the weak.
Joel Brooks:Because we were weak and Jesus has come to us. Why did Jesus do this? I'll end here. Why did Jesus come to us in our weakness? It's really important for us to wrestle with this because some of you are now thinking, great, now I got this pit in my stomach.
Joel Brooks:I mean I guess I gotta do my Christian duty. Gotta, you know, give up all my comforts, give up all my pleasures, give up the little happiness that I have, and I gotta go help the weak. Some of you are thinking. They're not gonna say that out loud. You're thinking it.
Joel Brooks:That's this calling. It's like, oh, you just you just feel so burdened here. That is not the case. Jesus went to the week out of joy. Hebrews says that, Jesus, he went to the cross.
Joel Brooks:He endured the cross for the joy that was set before him. That joy was he gained us. He was uniting himself to us. The joy is what Jesus is now building. A people to himself of every tongue, tribe, and nation.
Joel Brooks:The joy is this new harmonious song that we get to be a part of and sing for all of eternity. We are the ones who gain when we do this. This chapter here, these verses, they drip with hope. These that were hope hope over and over. Joy, encouragement.
Joel Brooks:This is the new life that Jesus is welcoming into. Is there sacrifice? Yes. There's always sacrifice as we live out the gospel, but there's always resurrection as we go through it. Jesus is calling us to one voice for all of eternity, sing his joyful song.
Joel Brooks:Pray with me. Father, thank you that you allow us to be part of that song. That we get to unite our voices together in harmony, lifting up the praises of our great God. Lord, I pray that you would teach us how we could live out the gospel with one another. We truly live it out in such a radical way.
Joel Brooks:We would actually take Jesus at his word is what he tells us to do, that the world would look at us and wonder. We would receive the joy and you would receive the glory. We pray this all in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.